it a charm you wear, little one?" she asked.
"No, that is my mother's picture," said Marushka, pulling out of her dress a little silver medal.
"Let me see it." The shepherd's wife examined the bit of silver. "Emeric!" she called to her husband in excited tones. "See here! This is no Gypsy child! Beneath her dress her skin is white – her hair is gold – her eyes are like the sky, and around her neck she wears the medal of Our Lady. She is of Christian parents. She must have been stolen by those thieving Gypsies. What do you know of Marushka?" she demanded, turning to Banda Bela, but the boy only shook his head.
"I have been with the band only a few weeks," he said. "Old Jarnik told me that they found the child deserted by the roadside and took care of her."
"A likely story," sniffed the woman. "I shall go and see this Jarnik!"
"But he cannot answer – " began Banda Bela, when the good woman interrupted —
"Not answer! Boy! there is no man, be he Gypsy or Christian, who will not answer me!" The shepherd nodded his head reminiscently.
"Jarnik won't," said Marushka. "He's dead!"
"Dead!" The woman was a little disconcerted.
"He died during the night," said Banda Bela. "There is great wailing for him now. We came away because nobody wanted us around. They will wail all day."
"Eat with us again, children," said the kind-hearted shepherd. "Your cheeks are the cheeks of famine. You are hungry, both eat! and the boy can make music for us. There will be time enough to question the Gypsies to-morrow."
Before the herder's hut a bough with several short branches protruding from it had been thrust into the ground, and upon these cooking pots had been hung. Soon goulash was simmering in the pot, and kasa was tossed together. The peasant's wife had brought bread and fine cheese, and curious-looking things which the children had never seen before.
"These are potatoes," said she. "They are new things to eat in this part of the country. The Government wants to encourage the people to earn their living from the earth. So it has made a study of all that can be raised in the country. Hungary produces grapes, maize, wheat, cereals, hemp, hops, and all manner of vegetables, and the State helps the people to raise crops in every way that it can. About five years ago the head of the Department of Agriculture decided that the people should be taught to raise potatoes, which are cheap vegetables and very nourishing. Arrangements were made with three large farms at Bars, Nyitra, and Szepes, to raise potatoes from seeds sent them by the Department. The next season these potatoes were distributed for seed to smaller farmers, with the condition that they in turn distribute potatoes for seed to other farmers. In this way nearly everyone soon was raising potatoes.
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